[Grem] The beatified parents of St. Theresa of Lisieux

[Emoke Greschik]

July 11, 2013   crisismagazine.com The Holy Household of Louis and Zélie
Martin

by Christopher J. Lane<http://www.crisismagazine.com/author/christopher-j-lane>

“*The good God gave me a father and mother more worthy of Heaven than of
earth.”*

*So wrote St. Thérèse of Lisieux of her parents,* Bl. Louis and Zélie
Martin, who married at midnight on July 13, 1858 and whose feast is
celebrated on July 12.

In considering the parents, we tend to look first to the sainted daughter.
After all, who would have heard of Monsieur and Madame Martin, if they had
not given the Little Flower to the world? Indeed, their principal shrine is
the great Basilica at Lisieux, erected in honor of St. Thérèse decades
before their own beatification. Among the reliefs adorning their ornate
reliquary are several images of their daughter. In the garden behind *Les
Buissonets*, the Martin family home at Lisieux, we find a lovely statue of
Thérèse asking Louis’s permission to enter Carmel at age 15. The reliquary
would seem incomplete without those reliefs of Thérèse, and a statue of
Louis alone in the garden would not be a fitting commemoration of the
father. Nevertheless, the sanctity of the parents was prior to that of the
daughter—both in time and, to a degree, in causality. They were not saintly
because they raised a saint; they raised a saint because they were saintly.
And so, I trust the Little Flower will not take it amiss if I bracket the
story of her soul, lest it obscure our vision of her parents.

[image: Louis-Zelie+Martin]<http://www.crisismagazine.com/?attachment_id=59779>If
we examine Louis and Zélie Martin in their own rights, they show us the
sanctifying potential of the nineteenth-century Catholic revival in France.
They are exemplars of what married lay men and women could become during
that dynamic and turbulent era. As the Church at large struggled to carry
the tradition into modernity, Monsieur and Madame Martin successfully did
just that in the microcosm of the Catholic home. Like the householder of
Matthew 13, their treasure consisted of both new things and old.

The most radical anticlerical and dechristianizing efforts of the French
Revolution had failed, and the Church had returned to prominence, first
under Napoleon and even more under the restored monarchy. The successful
revolutions of 1830 and 1848 brought no sustained, direct assaults on the
Church. Louis-Napoleon (later Napoleon III) pursued policies more
pro-Catholic and pro-papal than many French kings of the preceding
centuries. At the same time, the revolutionary deluge left an increasingly
liberal and pluralist French landscape, and the ongoing industrial
revolution swelled the cities, creating ample opportunity for indifference
to religion. Although political battles for religion raged on, Catholicism
could only flourish by becoming more voluntary and more innovative in order
to win<http://www.crisismagazine.com/2013/the-holy-household-of-louis-and-zelie-martin?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CrisisMagazine+%28Crisis+Magazine%29#>French
hearts on the cultural battlefield. And flourish it did: existing
religious orders were revitalized and new ones were founded; able writers
like Chateaubriand defended the beauty and truth of Christianity; new
movements like the Society of St. Vincent de Paul brought greater apostolic
opportunities to the lay faithful; mass production gave rise to a new
industry of inexpensive religious articles; and the railroad opened up new
pilgrimage routes, especially at Lourdes. This was the world in which Louis
Martin and Zélie Guérin grew up, and this was the ground into which they
planted their own household.

Louis and Zélie each came from prosperous bourgeois families. Before
marrying, both earned their livelihoods as masters of delicate crafts.
Louis became a watchmaker; Zélie a maker of *point d’Alençon*, the
specialty lace of her home region. After they married, both businesses
continued at their home in Alençon. For such luxury goods, household
production endured amid the rise of industrialization. But the liberalizing
economy left fewer safeguards against pursuing profit alone, without regard
for the common good. Louis resisted these temptations by, for example,
absolutely refusing to open the shop on Sunday, despite the contrary
prevailing norm. Zélie’s trade was based on a “putting-out” system, and she
bore constant solicitude for her workers. She took it upon herself to visit
them when they were ill, and she helped arrange their hire by other lace
makers when she lacked in orders. The Martins’ labors brought to the family
financial stability, all while they gave generous alms and saved for
emergencies, dowries, and retirement. As the new economic world reduced men
and women to contractual obligations, these two succeeded without
relinquishing timeless principles.

The Martin family’s devotional practices were nourished both by the long
tradition of Catholic spirituality and the newer fruits of the Catholic
revival. Early morning daily mass was standard, as were prayers in the
intimacy of the home. The famed statue of “Our Lady of the Smile” was
surrounded with flowers and greenery during the month of May. Family
spiritual reading included *The Imitation of Christ*, biographies of great
French saints like St. Jane Frances de
Chantal<http://www.crisismagazine.com/2012/everything-she-had-the-widows-mite-of-st-jeanne-de-chantal>,
Chateaubriand’s *The Genius of Christianity*, and* *Dom Prosper Guéranger’s
*The Liturgical Year*. The father was accustomed to making local
pilgrimages on foot, and the mother made the great pilgrimage to Lourdes by
train as she suffered from breast cancer.

Devotion did not make the Martin household a gloomy place. Zélie had
herself experienced piously-intentioned puritanism in her childhood
upbringing, and she did not want to inflict that upon her own. The family
enjoyed themselves at home and in the community. The mother’s letters show
her sense of humor at childhood antics and her tenderness with them. We
find her, especially with the youngest, taking care with the children’s
dress: “With little blue shoes, a blue sash, and a pretty white cloak,
[Thérèse] will be charming.” Both mother and father were playful sorts with
their girls. The mother could set aside her lace to spend two hours on a
dolls’ dinner party, and the father could honestly declare, “I am a big
child with my children.”

Louis and Zélie Martin both had held youthful hopes for the religious
vocation, and they closely cooperated with religious throughout their
lives. They famously began their marriage with the intention of permanent
continence, fortunately changing their plans after about a year. I say
fortunately because, of course, they raised not just one saint, but
certainly several more who will remain uncanonized. I say fortunately also,
because they were able to become exemplars of holiness who lived the
conjugal life in its fullness. All that said, they would have
wholeheartedly affirmed Bl. John Paul II’s affirmation that “the
consecrated life, by its very existence in the Church, seeks to serve the
consecration of the lives of all the faithful, clergy and laity alike.”
Their daughters were educated at the Visitation convent of Zélie’s sister,
Sr. Marie-Dosithée. All of their five surviving daughters entered religion,
four at the Carmel at Lisieux. Despite this love for religion, Louis’s
paternal heart did not find it easy to part with his girls, especially his
“Queen,” little Thérèse. These parents loved their own state of life, they
loved each other and their children, and they loved the consecrated
religious persons who played such important parts in their lives.

Causes for canonization have overwhelmingly favored priests and religious
for both theological and practical reasons. Among those raised to the
altars are few lay men and women, few married persons, and even fewer still
married persons who lived their conjugal union without permanent
continence. Canonization efforts usually require sustained organization
over decades and even centuries, and lay candidates for sainthood often
lack the resources of dioceses and religious orders. We must thank the
Little Flower, Louis’s “Queen,” for making possible the beatification and
hopeful canonization of her parents. The Church’s focus on lay sanctity has
been more explicit since the Second Vatican Council, which identified the
lay vocation as follows: “They live in the world, that is, in each and in
all of the secular professions and occupations. They live in the ordinary
circumstances of family and social life, from which the very web of their
existence is woven. They are called there by God that by exercising their
proper function and led by the spirit of the Gospel they may work for the
sanctification of the world from within as a leaven.” Bl. Louis and Zélie
Martin, in the “ordinary circumstances” of family life, of labor, of
prayer, and of play, fulfilled this description to the letter.
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